


Begin; End

by brokenmemento



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Deviates From Canon, F/F, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 12:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19425784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: A reworking of the episodic events of the episode "The Bachelor" in which Grace and Frankie share a little more than whiskey flights and dancing on bars.





	Begin; End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilbexi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilbexi/gifts).



> I've had this written for eons, but didn't have the final touches done until recently. I hope that it fills the prompt request well.
> 
> **For another take on similar events, I highly recommend _Dolled Up_ by sarken. The way Grace's jeans get ripped? Genius.

“Yes” is a simplistic word in structure, monosyllabic, but has great weight. It’s the one word that can turn anything and everything around, can flip it upside down or turn it inside out.

It’s that one word, for the life of her, she can’t believe she’s said. To Frankie, no less.

It’s why they’ve gone from sitting in the kitchen with candle wax on fingers and potentially picking up boyfriends at the airport to standing in Grace’s closet staring at the choices to change Frankie into. 

“Well, isn’t this a nightmare?” Frankie sighs and Grace jumps, remembering her presence. There had been so much possibility, so much to take into account, that she had momentarily forgotten she’d followed her.

“Oh, come on. Isn’t this supposed to be fun?” Grace asks. Frankie is behind her, as blank for Grace to create as one of the canvases in the studio. It almost makes her feel giddy inside, to think of Frankie devoid of her usual and not buried under a frock of material. 

“The only thing holding me together is stripping you out of this and putting you into something that will let you breathe. I mean, why do you have to be trussed up all the time?” Frankie grumbles as she runs her hand along the back of Grace’s black jacket and touches a pink one nearby with a frown.

Grace tries to get her brain past the word ‘strip’ that has fallen out of Frankie’s mouth and the touch that has landed, sending a jolt up her body. One that should, 100%, absolutely not have occurred. 

_No one’s touched me there in years_ , Grace thinks with the speed of hummingbird wings as she feels Frankie breeze past her deeper into the walk-in. She shakes her head and takes the crisply laundered garment that Frankie had touched previously. 

It’s not Frankie’s color, nothing she would ever adorn her body with. That’s why it’s wonderfully perfect. To see it mix with the flush that sometimes goes into Frankie’s cheeks when she’s excited. She pulls it off of the hanger and holds it up to Frankie’s figure.

“Ugh, alright. But no popped collars. There’s only so much I can take,” Frankie grumbles. 

Just as Grace is selecting the slacks, she spins around to see Frankie pulling at the edges of her top. Before she can say “hold on” or “stop,” it’s over her head and discarded to the floor. A gasp is all she can muster anymore because there is Frankie, only her bottom half covered. That waist and those hips and even those breasts that she had complimented her earlier on? 

They’re all out there. Only a simple pair of cotton briefs are left in place, the gauzy blue garment and gray overlay long gone. Her breasts are small, but ample and hang against her body. Despite the years, there is a simplistic beauty to them that Grace offhandedly finds herself thinking about more than she should. Her eyes trace down from there to the curvature of her hips and waist and she brings her hand to her chin and throat, doing little to stifle the gurgling sound that eventually gets let loose on the air.

“I’d rather be free than to have to stuff myself into something that a man created to hold back the natural elements of the female body,” Frankie says, stiffening her shoulders and tossing her brown and gray tresses over her shoulder. Her nipples peak a little in the faint cool of the room and Grace feels like she might die. “Coincidentally, I find shaving to be burdensome as well.”

Grace looks down to her legs but can’t exactly see in the soft light of her closet. A smirk plays on Frankie’s lips and she shakes her head, the grin staying plastered to her visage. “I didn’t specify where, Grace.”

Oh, _god_. She can’t do anything from the lump in her throat. She wills words to trickle out and eventually manages. “Right, uh, but if we are going out, you might need one,” Grace says, casting a glance back in her direction and flips the bra from her panty drawer toward Frankie. 

“I might absolutely not need one. And since when do you know my size?” Frankie asks as she pokes and prods at the fabric. Her face changes a little as her fingers rake across the material. 

“It’ll fit. I’m a good judge of…” she casts a look back in Frankie’s direction, feels too much like a voyeur but can’t, for the life of her, look away. A good judge of what, women’s breasts? Like she’s been practicing her whole life to know Frankie’s cup size? Hardly. She flicks her wrist to wave off the rest of the statement into oblivion. 

Mercifully, Frankie doesn’t put up much more fuss and is dressed. With a few tasteful pieces of jewelry, she looks almost presentable for a night on the town. All that’s left is a little makeup and to do her hair. When Grace motions to the stool in front of her vanity, Frankie plops and slumps in front of the mirror.

“Where’s that upbeat attitude? Soon we will be out in the nightlife and enjoying ourselves,” Grace tries to smile her best smile, willing everything that’s happened so far to bleed out. Her fingers graze the base of Frankie’s neck and she jumps a little. The things that Grace would love to bleed out seem to seep further in because the warm skin underneath her hands is pleasant to connect with. 

Grace’s heart flutters, stutters. What in the hell is happening now? She has to get finished with this so she can transition this whole thing back to a more predictable nightmare. 

Grabbing the clip that had held her hair in place earlier, Grace uses her fingers as a comb to pull Frankie’s hair up and back in a similar style. Every so often, she chances a glance in the mirror to see Frankie still scowling a bit but a little less so than before. The prospect of what she can do to Grace, what she can subject her to, has to be high on the list of why she is tolerating as much as she has so far without little kickback.

Little ringlets fall down on the sides, framing Frankie’s face, and Grace stands back to look at her work. With a satisfied smile, she puts her hands on Frankie’s shoulders. 

“You look…” Grace begins and exhales. _Put together. Fantastic. Elegant. Beautiful._ So many ways she can complete her thought but Frankie stands abruptly and does it for her. 

“Like I’m five seconds away from processing the paperwork for your 401k. Come on. It’s my turn,” Frankie grumbles and grabs Grace’s hand, pulling her at a quicker clip than she can almost manage down the stairs and out back to the studio. 

She finally releases Grace's hand when they reach the door to her inner sanctum and Grace has to shake feeling back into her hand. Inside, Frankie makes her way to a truck nearby and Grace can only apprehensively follow, wondering if she should have toned down her version of the makeover to spare herself. 

Grace watches warily as Frankie throws piece after piece of clothing out. From the couch where she has perched herself, it all looks like a mess and exactly like the kind of disarray that she should have expected. 

Grace runs a hand along the fake leather and recoils it when something splats beside her on the surface. As she’s looking at the heap, another thunk atop the first. Slowly, she unwinds the two pieces to see a trademark Frankie Bergstein concert tee and a barely-there pair of jeans, ripped to shreds pretty much everywhere. Thankfully, still able to cover the places that matter. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says, stunned yet getting less so by the second. 

“Those are bitchin’ threads. And if you’re trying to register a passive aggressive complaint, I’d like you to take a look at Exhibit A and direct all complaints to the ‘No Fucks Are Given’ pile that is in this ear and out the other,” Frankie says with a generous flourish over her clothing. 

“Fine, but do you have some place I can—” Grace begins as she stands and picks up the clothes.

“Not really, no. You’re going to have to do it right here,” Frankie shrugs. 

“You mean, right...here. Like out in the open?” 

“Now would be the time to shelve your misplaced modesty. Besides, I already paved the way for you. Nothing to be afraid of. We’ve both got the same thing going on under everything,” Frankie tries to ease her mind. 

Grace waits for as long as she can stand Frankie watching her. Letting out a disgusted grunt, she throws her black blazer on her bed and spins on a heel away from Frankie, who lets out a scoff and her version of a grunt. Grabbing the edge of her turtleneck, she lets it go the way of her jacket. 

Her bra is a little more upscale than her norm, but she’d taken the advantage to dress up as an opportunity to do so head to toe. While not outright skimpy lingerie, the fancy undergarment is a far cry from her bare bones basics. She’s reaching for her slacks when Frankie’s voice jolts her hand away.

“Take it off,” hits the air of the room and does anything but wither. It sends a charge into the space, the lack of specificity of what needs to be removed exciting and unknown. 

Grace decides to assume and moves back to the clasp on her slacks but Frankie stutter-steps in a rush and stills Grace’s hand with touch this time. They’re not above knowing how close they are to where Grace is learning she may want Frankie to be after all. 

“No, I mean…” she motions to Grace’s chest and then makes a gesture like she’s removing her own and throwing it behind her. 

In a moment where question should be forthcoming, Grace finds herself withholding and doing exactly what Frankie asks because hadn’t she said she’d do anything? And, it seems, anything includes removing articles of clothing in front of one another this evening. The parts of Frankie she has seen are not really new but a revisiting of another moment where Frankie bared herself to Grace.

Drawing in a breath, she shakily reaches behind her and unhooks the clasps in one motion. She can’t drop it immediately though because Frankie’s eyes are on her and they aren’t looking away. Their gazes catch before Frankie rolls her eyes and smacks her forehead mumbling “right” as she turns dramatically away from Grace, chivalrous like Grace most certainly wasn’t. 

If Grace gives herself too much time to think about what she’s being asked to do, there’s no way she’s going to do it. Instead, she lets caution go the way of the wind because so what if Frankie sees her? So what if she looks a little longer than necessary? Who cares if she notices the parts of Grace’s body Grace has tried to ignore on herself?

She lets go of the clasp on slides it from her shoulders leaving her bare up top. Errantly, the wild beat of wanting Frankie to turn around, wanting her to see the uncovered flesh of her body, rears hard in Grace and if tonight really is about letting herself have, in not telling herself no, shouldn’t she allow herself to let it happen?

Angling her body slightly, she turns to face the wall and makes quick work of her hands, undoing the slacks and sliding them down her thighs. The thought of not wearing underwear too quirks her lips but she decides against it. They stay in place as she works to tug the pair of pants Frankie has tossed toward her. Now only slightly undone on the bottom and still absent covering above, she decides it’s time to fluster Frankie a bit.

Grace settles on a well thought out agitated sound to draw Frankie’s attention. Steeling her nerves and the rapidly growing pace of her heart, she is almost rendered weak in the knees when she’s no longer in the privacy of her own gaze.

When Frankie turns around, Grace has a flimsy hold on herself. The slit jeans are plastered to her legs like she’s been poured into them and her hands and arm cover what she can of her chest. There wasn’t a bra in the pile and she had surmised there was a very blatant reason for that as Frankie turned around. 

“My bad. Thought you’d had enough time,” Frankie fauxpologizes. She takes in Grace’s current state and frowns. “What’s the holdup with the shirt?”

Grace’s face burns, everything white hot. She tries to not feel embarrassed to be standing here like she is but even more mortified to not be getting the response she’d irrationally wanted, even needed. To cover, she straightens her back and squares her shoulders. “I need a bra. There wasn’t one in the pile. Can you get me—“

“No!” Frankie lets out, touches Grace’s arm and steadies her movement. Instead of moving it away, it lingers. Seconds pass and the finger twitches, moves. It becomes maddening as Grace watches Frankie’s nostrils flare and her biting the inside of her cheek. “You won’t need one.”

“Really, I’m…”

Frankie’s still looking at her, a look on her face Grace can’t quite peg. Confusion, irritation, and if she didn’t know any better, would she hazard...no. It can’t be. There is no way Frankie is aroused. At the thought, a feeling beats low that Grace has a hard time slapping away. She’s not like this. Never. Not once. 

“For one night in your life, just try to be less you. I promise it will be worth it,” Frankie finally says. Not before tucking her bottom lip under her teeth though as she looks at the appendage providing the makeshift covering Grace has made for herself, who must surely be well on her way to her grave by now.

In a rush, Frankie spins and waves at Grace wildly to get dressed. Both grateful and despondent at the same time due to the reprieve of someone’s eyes, she finally covers her chest with the tee. It feels soft but foreign against her skin, a missing barrier needed to block out something that’s feeling oddly good. 

“Sit down, sit down. We’ve got to do something with that updo of yours. Needs more teasing and less quaffing,” Frankie says grabbing a brush and a can of hairspray. “Plus I’ve been dying to use this awesome hair piece I got recently.”

Before Grace can say anything, Frankie is undoing the clip holding up her hair and it falls down around her shoulders. She shakes it out and runs a hand through it to tame it a little due to the curl. When she stops, she’s noticed Frankie’s gone still again. 

“Frankie?”

“Yeah, uh. Okay,” she grits out behind Grace.

Her touch lands again, this time at the base of Grace’s neck. Her fingers are cool, soft somehow too, more delicate than Grace would have given them credit for. Incredibly skilled as well, which is no surprise. 

She manages something quickly and when she stands, Grace knows she’s got to look like a goof but the way Frankie is looking at her rearranges her thoughts. When Frankie says “You look amazing,” everything is floating by the wayside. 

“Thank you,” Grace replies, their eyes locking and holding. 

Frankie takes a step closer, eyes darker in the faint light of the studio. Grace’s chest feels tight, the pounding of her anxious heart unignorable as Frankie inches ever nearer and she has a flickering moment to ask herself what she will do if this Say Yes night exits the boundaries of what she feels comfortable with. 

Just as she gets used to the idea, just as fast as she was able to question her own thoughts and behavior, Frankie dips her hand away and gives a solid nod.

“Okay, then. Let’s go fuck some shit up,” she says and Grace tries not to feel disappointment everywhere. 

Watching her turn and leave, she decides that for tonight, only Frankie matters. Tonight, Grace will do whatever it takes to see Frankie smile again.

*******************

The hours pass in no manner of expectation. Between whiskey flights and dancing on bars and arm tickling on desolate street sidewalks, they’ve managed to pack a lot of shit into this Say Yes Night. When she finally musters it up to call a cab, the wait makes her chest ache with ending. That the night will be over and their lives will resume to follow the pattern of which they operate.

Tires come to a stop in front of her line of sight.

Frankie throws open the door and enters with the gusto she always does everything even though she’s just complained about being tired. Grace hesitates, much longer than she should. There’s something about entering the car, going away from this place and heading toward home. It feels like it will remove the veil of what’s happening here.

She’d felt good descending the stairs, her black jacket all smoke and charcoal, hair swept up in a wave of blonde light. The feeling doesn’t even compare to what she experiences when she finally enters the car. Frankie scoots closer and rests her palm on Grace’s thigh, the one that isn’t completely covered because of the rips and her touch lands, sending the sensation down to Grace’s skin. 

Grace looks up from the touch and it’s dark, but she can make out the way Frankie’s looking at her. A beat, hot, rears and suddenly the food isn’t the only thing wild tonight. This simple act of gratitude from Frankie has changed the chemical makeup of Grace’s brain. While perhaps not completely rewired, the colors have definitely been snipped and she feels things start to short circuit. Her mind, her heart-even her arms-don’t obey as they reach out of their own volition. 

They’re in an Uber still miles from home and maybe that’s why she’s bold at this moment. Because she’s still some other version of herself, the one Frankie has created for tonight and that’s why she can deal with this part of herself going rogue. 

Her arm is a snake around Frankie’s wrist, wrapping, and she slithers impossibly closer, propelled by what remains to be seen. Breath escapes more slowly, expunged from lungs in a change in respiration. She looks, really looks, at Frankie to determine if she’s about to make a grave mistake. 

“I’d like you to kiss me,” she blurts out, the disconnect between her mind and mouth clear now. 

“Oh, Grace. What about your guy, Guy?” Frankie doesn’t really say so much as utter on a dying breath. 

“Say yes,” Grace says lowly, veiled. There’s more here tonight than a missing declaration of intent, of a lack of a yearning from a heart. Somehow Guy is the least of her concerns, her stilted relationship with him on some burner that isn’t even turned on. 

Unlike the one with Frankie, which is lit. Bright, seemingly unending. The adjectives she’d used earlier float back to her ears and she hears them for herself now that they’re on replay. _Sexy. Gorgeous._ The things she’d noticed- _waist, hips, breasts. Beautiful hair. Cute ears._

She can’t remember one single compliment she’s paid Frankie in the last forty years and she’s spilled forth with ardor unending tonight. Suddenly, she doesn’t want a fine point to mark beginning or end.

Grace had felt the jester, the fool, when she’d walked out the door tonight. There’d been too much whiskey and not enough vodka and everything was changing. She’s never really been badass in her life, but she feels the rush of being one under the moon of this night. She’s a woman who dances on bars, gets kicked out of them, and sits on curbs while tickling women’s arms.

“Yes,” is what she hears immediately after she becomes a woman who asks for affection from annoying roommates and then receives it.

Frankie tastes like everything she wants, everything that might just be missing, and nothing she has imagined as she lets go of her wrist and kisses her in the backseat of freaking Prius.

It shouldn’t be thrilling or send jolts to every part of her body that can feel. Goosebumps, adrenaline, sweat, and shallow exhalations are effects of an act she never would have considered doing if not for this ridiculous concept on this now glorious night. 

It doesn’t last long, but Grace thinks that’s the case no matter how long it was ever going to be. It’s too damn short because when she has a chance to look at Frankie in the eyes afterward, there’s a little sadness there instead of joy. She brings a hand to Grace’s face, to her plume of blonde-blue hair, and smiles in the same melancholy way. 

“There are only three minutes left to ‘Say Yes’ night,” Frankie says lowly, the vestiges of disappointment and longing lodged in the words. In them, there’s something else far-reaching, something that takes refuge in Grace’s chest and won’t let go.

“We better make it count then,” is what she says and yeah, it’s as cliche as it gets. But then she can’t much fault herself from the lack of deviation or unpredictability in the response because her mouth is kissing Frankie again and does for the next glorious 172 seconds. 

It’s not really a Cinderella story when the clock strikes midnight, but it’s close. She’s still in her getup Frankie dressed her in and Frankie is all pink and curls still, but the must-say yeses go the way of the hours.

The car ride home is not empty though, the silence filling the space from door to window to the seat. It’s comfortable and Grace leans her head against the window, the cool press of it against her heated skin a counterpoint to the night. Past the bright lights, the inevitable smog of cities, stars burn. The moon’s bleary haze is a pinprick in the dark, a lantern in a landscape full of lights. 

Frankie’s hand glides across her skin, locks them together. Grace thinks back to moments before, to her mouth and breath and hands. She’s in her mid-seventies and while she’d give anything to rewind a little bit, she feels the gnawing of hope, deep and lacking complacency. Their hands, connected in unspoken acceptance of what has happened, don’t brush away the truth of what’s forming.

***************************

It’s five years before she gets to kiss Frankie again. 

So much has happened, from divorces and new roommates to a revolving door of lovers and souls so wrong for the both of them that it finally hits Grace like a ton of bricks. 

Somehow, she’s managed to do it again. To not only buy hinges, but hang a new roadblock to assuage the emotional heaviness of Frankie being the best part of her. 

Grace supposes though, that when spectral beings descend from astral planes to talk about the best and greatest piece of you, you need to listen. She still doesn’t know how the hell it happened, but she is past the point of not acknowledging the depth and weight of Frankie in her. It’s these features that destroy Nick on the boundaries of her. 

Sure, she’s loved some part of him. She’s even voiced it in a crowded restaurant in front of his mother. But all of it seems for naught as she’s wading knee deep in her fourth Fireball shot and staring at Frankie without even trying to hide it. Somewhere, somewhere, she’s become it. And that fact emboldens Grace to hold her a little closer as they walk out the doors of Dave and Busters, her own hand holding Frankie’s waist while Frankie double fists tickets as the spoils of their outing. 

National Vibrator Day, Bud’s wedding, and a stupid knee-jerk reaction to a blowup fight lead her to drowning in a different kind of substance, guilt. She can’t be in bed beside him without thinking of tiptoeing to Frankie’s studio and doing exactly what she told the world they do at night sometimes. She can’t be a wife to a man when she has wanted nothing more than to embody that word to the woman who ripped her heart to shreds.

It takes a while after the severing to make her way back to Frankie. There’s a lot to stitch and repair. Days turn to weeks which morph to months. Eventually, Grace has enough confidence to approach Frankie and do the thing she’s thought about in quiet moments for over five years.

It’s not any special day when it happens again. Quite the opposite in fact.

They’ve gotten back into the groove of their lives, the way things used to be before. The summer is unusually warm for the maritime climate of La Jolla and the city has been cranking the cold of A/C’s up, subjecting inhabitants to rolling blackouts from the power companies. 

Never more than a few minutes, the world goes dark and quiet for a beat. 

They’re in the kitchen when it happens, a later dinner than normal but nothing too wild. The soft light outside doesn’t cast the world into a total pitch, but Frankie is just a silhouette beside her. 

“You know I’m all about the environment, power to Greenpeace and what have you, but I’m finding that even without a bra, I’m still sweating in places I shouldn’t be,” Frankie sighs and takes a bite of the food on her plate in the half-light. 

Grace knows she’s only got a couple of minutes, max, before the lights come back on and illuminate their world again. Her hand is already on the back of Frankie’s chair and it’s now or never. 

Standing, she lets the other hand not death gripping the back of Frankie’s chair pull her up and into Grace’s chest. They align and she doesn’t give Frankie a chance to mutter “what the fuck?” or any other phrase before she touches their lips together and glides to a long-ago moment in the backseat of an Uber on a beautiful night she wasn’t a version of herself she was well acquainted with yet.

A whir, a hum, and then the world is as it is, all brightness and effervescence. Her mouth disengages and Grace opens her eyes with slow anticipation, not knowing what to expect on the other end.

She doesn’t let go of Frankie, uses her for balance and stability and life. Grace shakes her head and runs a hand along Frankie’s face, feeling the time and lines and vitality there. 

“Frankie,” she whispers. In her heart, she’s five years younger. She’s danced on a bar and gotten kicked out of a building. She’s kissed a girl and started to fall in love with her. Her heart knows this too, has lived with it for days on end.

“What took you so long?” Frankie smiles and Grace can’t help the happiness that soars throughout her. 

She turns on her own grin, brighter than the kilowatts blazing in their home. Grace wants to cry and maybe a tear escapes and slides down her cheek as she laughs a laugh filled with joy and mirth. Grace kisses Frankie again, saying yes to everything else for the rest of their lives.


End file.
